


(i won't cut my beard) and i won't change my hair

by epilogues



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Curses, Getting Together, M/M, True Love's Kiss, Witchcraft, they're all stupid that's pretty much the plot, uhhh, well. not kiss but you'll see
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 11:25:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15750717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epilogues/pseuds/epilogues
Summary: “Pete, dude, seriously. I know we’re on tour and everything, but youreallyneed to get a haircut,” Patrick says.





	(i won't cut my beard) and i won't change my hair

**Author's Note:**

> i blame pete wentz' 2018 hair for this because. duh.
> 
> also big thanks to cass (like always) for helping me out and generally writing plots for me, ze's rad af!
> 
> OH YEAH and one more thing before i forget, there's a scene involving (a very small) fire in this, so be careful if that might be bad for you!

“Pete, dude, seriously. I know we’re on tour and everything, but you  _ really  _ need to get a haircut,” Patrick says.

Pete doesn’t even look up from whatever bullshit he’s tweeting today as he shakes his head. “You’re not allowed to tell me anything about hair, okay, I have so many sideburn pictures that I can pull out…”

Patrick huffs. That’s a low blow and Pete knows it. “Shut up,” he responds after failing to think of a good comeback, and then he’s heading back to his bunk before Pete gives him shit for his lame reply.

Once he’s in his bunk, Patrick gets… an idea. If Pete won’t _ see _ that he really needs to get a haircut, maybe Patrick can  _ show  _ him _.  _ Luckily, Andy and Joe are on the other bus, so there’s no one to question what the fuck Patrick’s doing in his bunk so early.

Patrick makes sure the curtain is drawn all the way over, and then he reaches under the thin mattress and pulls out his, for lack of a better word, spellbook. He doesn’t use it often mostly because he doesn’t have the  _ chance  _ to, but also partly because he has some half-formed ideals about how using magic to intervene in other people’s lives is wrong and shit like that. However, Pete’s hair is  _ definitely  _ something that falls on Patrick’s list of Dire Emergencies That Require Magic.

He flips through the pages, cursing the fact that his grandmother, the witch who’d owned the book before him, had apparently decided that tables of contents were irrelevant and torn the book’s out. He’s pretty sure that he saw something with the word Rapunzel in here before, though, and that sounds hair-related.

Patrick finds the spell about twenty minutes later.  _ Rapunzel Curse,  _ reads its very elaborate name.  _ This curse causes the victim’s hair to grow uncontrollably until - _

Just then, there’s a loud knock on the wall next to Patrick’s bunk. “Hey, we’re stopping to get pizza, do you want to come in or do you want us to just bring you something?”

Patrick snaps the book shut almost immediately, right after he casts a quick glance over the list of ingredients. “Uh, I’ll come in, one second.”

He clambers out of the bunk a moment later to find Pete staring at him with a shit-eating grin. “You busy in there?”

Patrick feels his cheeks instinctively flushing red at the thought of Pete thinking about him doing… that, but Pete’s saved from the usual punch when Patrick reminds himself what he’s about to do.

* * *

 

After dinner, Pete and Patrick wave goodbye to Joe and Andy for the night. They have a long night of driving ahead of them to make it to tomorrow’s show, but Patrick insists on stopping by the nearby grocery store before they get back on the road.

“I need more shampoo,” Patrick lies, “I’m almost out.”   


Pete, contrary to Patrick’s hopes, happily agrees to tag along. “Yeah, same, I need shampoo too!”

Patrick rolls his eyes as he grabs a small basket. “You wouldn’t go through it so fast if you cut your goddamn hair, you know,” he points out.

“My hair’s fine, shut up,” Pete says, but it’s clear he’s not actually listening anymore. “Hey, I’m gonna go grab some more shaving cream too, meet back here in like ten minutes?”

“Sure,” Patrick agrees, mentally fist-pumping in triumph as Pete disappears down some aisle. He heads right to the herb section and throws a few of his go-tos - rosemary, thyme, and lavender - into his basket before trying to picture the Rapunzel recipe and find those ingredients as well. 

He’s not entirely sure what kind of grocery store this  _ is  _ because most of these things are usually a lot harder to find, but Patrick gets apple fruit, barley grass, and honeysuckle before he hears Pete’s voice calling from a nearby aisle and has to run off to actually find shampoo.

Somehow, Pete doesn’t notice the strange contents of the bags Patrick carries out of the store, and they make it back to the bus without incident. 

Pete actually goes to bed at a reasonable time, so Patrick’s able to sneak into the bus kitchen and do the spell. It’s simple, he just mixes the herbs together with a couple of Pete’s hairs that he found on a sweatshirt that Patrick is pretty sure Pete stole from him.

Once it’s mixed, Patrick lights a candle under the bowl and murmurs the Latin words listed on the page. A soft glow begins to emanate from the bowl, casting a better light over the spellbook page than Patrick’s phone flashlight. 

And that’s when Patrick sees it. 

He hadn’t gotten a chance to finish reading the description of the spell earlier, but now the words glare up at him under the light of the candle.  _ This curse causes the victim’s hair to grow uncontrollably until it’s cut by the victim’s true love. The first cut by true love ends the curse. _

“Shit!” Patrick says, “Shit, shit, shit!” He immediately starts waving his hand at the candle, trying to put it out before the spell is complete, but it’s too late. The glow coming from the bowl gets momentarily brighter before the kitchen is dropped back into darkness, and Patrick drops his head onto the counter. The spell’s finished now, whether Patrick likes it or not. “ _ Shit." _

Patrick has… one other rule for spells, especially spells on Pete. He’s only ever cast a few on Pete, of course, and they’ve mostly been just positive vibe-type things when Pete really needs them. But no matter what kind of spell it is, it  _ cannot  _ be a true love spell. That’s for a couple of reasons, some of them ethical stuff, of course, but there’s also the fact that, well. 

Well, the thing is that Patrick’s  _ scared _ . If he places a curse on Pete that can only be broken by Pete’s true love ( _ Which you literally just did,  _ his brain reminds him unhelpfully), then there are two basic outcomes: either Patrick won’t be able to break the spell - likely, what Patrick tells himself he wants - or he  _ will  _ \- very unlikely, terrifying, what Patrick will forever and always insist is a very bad idea. And now, it looks like Patrick’s finally going to find out.

“Shit,” he says again, just to really get his point across to the empty kitchenette, and then he’s scraping the herbs and hair into the sink and trying to act like everything is fine as he slinks back to his bunk.

* * *

 

The thing about most curses is that they’re pretty slow-acting. Patrick had figured that this spell would keep Pete’s hair growth at the same rate but just make it uncuttable, that seems reasonable, after all. However, magic doesn’t tend to be reasonable - two days later, Pete’s hair is just brushing his shoulders.

“Dude, what the fuck?” Joe says as they’re warming up backstage before that night’s show. “Your hair seriously grew overnight, get a fucking haircut already.”

Pete squints at himself in the mirror and shrugs. “Looks fine to me.” 

Andy looks over from where he’s checking something on his phone and rolls his eyes. “Pete, Joe’s right, you really need a haircut.”

“My hair is  _ fine, _ ” Pete retorts half-defensively. “Patrick, tell them my hair is fine.”

“Patrick, tell Pete that his hair literally grew like three inches overnight,” Joe says.

“I’m with Joe,” adds Andy helpfully.

Patrick continues his vocal warm-ups without looking at any of his idiot bandmates, but he throws a little irritation into his voice so they know he’s heard them. (Yes, he’s very well aware that this is his own fault now, but. It’s fine. This is fine. Everything is abso-fucking-lutely fine.)

The show actually does go fairly well that night, if you ignore the fact that Pete’s new stage hobby is flipping his hair. Patrick tries really, really hard to ignore that.

There’s some weird confusion with where the buses are after the show, and then Patrick leaves his phone somewhere and has to go find it, and by the time he makes it out to the parking lot where the buses are sitting, he’s exhausted.

He opens the door to his and Pete’s bus to the sound of Pete fucking  _ screeching.  _ “Goddamnit,” he swears under his breath. He’d really just wanted to get into his bunk and sleep tonight, and yet. And yet Pete comes tearing past the door a second later, and he’s running from - 

He’s running from fucking Joe, who’s holding a pair of fucking scissors, and Patrick is so done with this shit. (Even if it  _ is  _ his fault.)

“What the fuck?” Patrick exclaims.

“Trying - to - cut - his - fucking - hair,” Joe pants out, finally coming to a halt in front of Patrick and waving his scissors vaguely.

Pete seems to have locked himself in the bathroom. “You’re not cutting my hair!” he yells.”Fuck off!”

Patrick sighs, intentionally exaggerating the sound in the hopes that Pete will hear. While he’d bet everything he owns on the fact that Joe wouldn’t be able to cut Pete’s hair, Patrick still refuses to take the chance that this curse will end before Pete realizes the dire need to cut his stupid hair. “Joe,” he says in what he thinks is a very reasonable tone. “I’d like to use the bathroom and go to sleep, but if you’re going to scare Pete in there all night, I can’t do that. So, please, drop the scissors, and  _ get the fuck off my bus. _ ”

Joe snorts. “Fine, fine, Stump, I’ll leave you two alone. But tell Pete I’m gonna be back tomorrow with the scissors.” He waggles his eyebrows vaguely at Patrick, then sidesteps him and walks back to his own bus. Patrick shuts the door behind him with a sigh. He’s too tired for this shit.

* * *

 

Pete waltzes out of the bathroom the next morning with his hair in fucking  _ braids.  _

Patrick blinks at him for a long moment. “Are those - you braided it. You seriously just braided it.”

“Yep!” Pete grins at Patrick as he pours himself a cup of coffee. “What do you think?”

“That that’s a sign that you need to cut it?” Patrick offers.

Pete rolls his eyes. “I don’t need your negativity in my life, Patrick, I’m living my best life with my best hair. Besides, the fans love it, I posted a selfie earlier and everyone’s going wild.”

“Pete?”   


“Yes?”

“Just - shut up.”

* * *

 

That night, Patrick’s woken up at three am by a loud exclamation of, “What the  _ fuck? _ ” from Joe. 

He peels back his bunk curtain reluctantly, blinking sleep from his eyes. “Whazzit?” he mumbles.

“Pete’s hair just broke my scissors!” Joe shrieks.

Patrick blinks slowly, once, twice. He wishes he could blink his ears or something because he’s not processing words all that well right now. “What?”

“Pete’s hair just broke my scissors!” Joe holds the scissors in question up to Patrick, and.. they’re actually broken. Huh. The only remaining part is the handles, the actual blades are in a shattered pile on the floor of the bus. 

“His.. hair?” Patrick asks. The pieces are slowly starting to click together now. Pete’s hair. It can’t be cut by anyone but Pete’s true love, so it would make sense if anyone else’s scissors would shatter, right? 

“Yes!” Joe says. “I went to cut it, and then the scissors just broke! Pete, wake up, man, look what your hair did! I think you’re cursed, honestly.”   


Pete finally starts to wake up as well, but Patrick has already ducked back into his bunk to freak out a bit.

So. Joe and Pete aren’t soulmates. This isn’t new information, obviously, but it means…  _ Less competition,  _ an annoying part of Patrick’s brain whispers. He tells it to shut up, but he knows that’s what feels big about this. The rest of his brain is just filled with slowly growing concern because there’s no way to pretend that Pete’s hair is just growing naturally now, is there?

However, as proved by Joe and Pete’s eloquent conversation a moment later, there actually  _ is.  _

“Pete! Your hair, like, is indestructible, dude, it broke my scissors,” Joe says. 

“Shut up ab’t my hair,” Pete slurs, clearly still mostly asleep.

“No, dude, your hair is  _ cursed _ or something, seriously, this is a big deal.”

“We’ll deal with it in the morning,” Pete says, although it sounds more like “welldewitmorning.”

“Yeah,” Patrick chimes in from behind his curtain. “In the morning. Later. After more sleep.”

Joe sighs heavily, like he’s going to keep arguing, but the bus door creaks open and then slams shut a moment later, so Patrick counts it as a victory and goes back to sleep before he can think too much.

* * *

 

Pete’s hair is almost halfway down his back by the time their schedule calms down again enough for anyone to actually notice it.

“Dude,” Andy says that morning when they all meet up for breakfast. “Seriously. Cut your goddamn hair.”

“He  _ can’t,”  _ Joe says, reaching into his jeans pocket and holding up his broken scissors handles. “Look what it did to my scissors when I tried to cut it the other night! Something’s like, actually kind of fucked up here. Patrick was there when it happened, isn’t there something weird about this, Patrick?”

Patrick shoots Joe a vaguely annoyed glance over the coffee he hasn’t even had a chance to drink yet. “What the hell are you trying to get at? That Pete has some sort of indestructible hair?” (Patrick’s found that the best way of hiding something is to present the truth as something he’d never believe.)

“Well - yes!” Joe huffs, waving the hand with the scissor handles above his head in frustration. “How else do you explain this?”

“My hair’s just so great, the universe refuses to let it get hurt,” Pete suggests. It’s clear that he’s not taking any of this seriously.

Patrick just sighs, because so far this curse has gotten him a  _ lot  _ of headaches and just a  _ lot  _ more of Pete’s hair, which is literally the opposite of what Patrick had wanted.

“I think Joe might be a little… tired, and strung out from touring for two months straight,” Andy says carefully, “but I do agree that Pete’s hair is not only freakishly long, it’s freakishly ugly.”   
  
“Hey!” Pete says. “Now that’s just mean, Hurley.”

Andy shrugs, raising one eyebrow as if to say,  _ Well, it’s the truth, so deal with it,  _ before returning his attention to his phone.

“I’m serious over here, guys,” complains Joe. “My scissors didn’t just break on their own!”

Patrick stands up, drops a five dollar bill on the table, and grabs his coffee. “You’re all fucking ridiculous, I’m going to go for a walk. Text me before you leave this time.”

“Okay,” Andy says. Joe barely even notices that Patrick’s leaving; he’s too busy trying to reach across the table and show that he can’t even cut Pete’s hair with the butter knife. Pete’s pretty preoccupied with trying to duck the (dull) blade, but he still casts Patrick a vaguely worried look as he walks out of the diner.

It’s the middle of January, so Patrick’s grateful for the scalding warmth of his coffee in his hands as he wanders aimlessly down the sidewalk and towards a small grassy clearing. It’s not even eight am, which is really not Patrick’s thing, but at least it’s unlikely that he’ll run into any fans this early.

It’s the first time Patrick’s been further than, like, twenty feet away from Pete in several days, and the resulting quiet is nice. He can’t say he’s been overly stressed about the curse, but that’s really only because he hasn’t had the  _ time  _ to, thanks to interviews and shows and Pete’s brilliant idea to film the tour parts of their newest music video in the fucking middle of tour.  It’s been… stressful, to say the least.

_ On the bright side, though, _ Patrick thinks, _ I haven’t had too much time to think about how I may or may not be hopelessly in love with -  _

“Hey!” A loud voice calls from across the clearing, startling Patrick. He jolts in surprise and spills ridiculously hot coffee all over his shirt and jeans. 

“Shit!” he shouts, half in surprise and half in pain. He’s looking around for a napkin or something when he realizes exactly whose voice that was. With a groan, Patrick looks up, right into the apologetic eyes of Pete.

“Uh, fuck, sorry about that,” he’s saying. “I have napkins in my pocket, I think, sorry, I wasn’t trying to scare you, uh - “

“It’s fine,” Patrick says, mostly because it’s 7:30am and he really isn’t awake enough to try and figure out whether or not Pete is genuinely sorry. 

He gives up on trying to save his shirt as Pete sits down next to him, immediately slinging an arm around Patrick’s shoulders. Patrick’s too used to it to tense up at the touch, but there’s still a slight flush rising to his cheeks that he blames mostly on the thoughts that Pete had just cut off.

“How are you?” Pete asks, and Patrick classifies the tone immediately. It’s Pete’s  _ I’m Feeling Guilty And Possibly A Little Down On Myself So I’m Going To Be As Nice As Possible To Patrick To Try And Fix It Even Though I May Also Have Prank-Related Motives  _ voice. “I know I’ve kind of been running us into the ground lately, and you’ve seemed pretty stressed.”

“I’m fine,” Patrick says, and he’s not  _ really  _ lying that much, okay. “I’m just ready for this tour to be over.”

“Yeah, me too,” Pete says. He leans his head against Patrick’s, and Patrick is 110%  _ not  _ thinking about what it would be like if Pete’s goddamn hair wasn’t tickling the back of Patrick’s neck and if Patrick was the one who’d cut it and if he could turn his head just to the left and kiss Pete. He never thinks about that sort of thing, obviously.

“Only a few more weeks, though,” Patrick points out. It feels so far away, and yet Patrick knows that it’ll be here before he knows it and that the minute he’s back in his silent house, he’s going to miss the band like crazy.

Pete just hums an affirmative noise into Patrick’s shoulder. He sounds half-asleep, and Patrick isn’t thinking about how Pete is cute like this, because he’s Pete Wentz and he’s Patrick’s best friend and - And Patrick’s usually so much better at controlling this shit, what the fuck, he’s not in love with Pete and he needs to stop having these In Love With Pete kind of thoughts. 

The heavy sigh Patrick directs at himself almost drowns out the soft  _ ding!  _ of his phone. He pulls it out of his jeans pocket and reads the text from Andy. 

“C’mon, we’re supposed to be leaving in like, a minute, we’ve gotta get back to the bus,” Patrick says, pushing Pete off of him.

“I don’t wanna get up,” Pete complains, but he stands up anyway and follows Patrick back to the bus, the tiny, stupid braid he made with a few strands of his hair at breakfast swinging in his eyes all the way.

* * *

 

“Shh, you’re gonna wake them up!” 

Patrick sits up in his bunk slightly. Even though he’s exhausted, he hasn’t been able to sleep. Every time he tries he’s just confronted with a vague mental image of him cutting Pete’s hair and Pete, like, kissing him out of gratitude. Which Patrick  _ definitely  _ doesn’t want, so he honestly has no idea why that’s floating around his brain in the first place. 

“-really don’t think this is a good idea, Joe,” a voice whispers, and Patrick’s attention is jerked back to the fact that hey, someone’s on the fucking bus. 

“Look, all I’m saying is that it’s worth a try,” the first person -  _ Joe,  _ Patrick recognizes - says. “If this doesn’t work, we’ll know that there’s really something going on.”

The other person, who Patrick now realizes must be Andy, sighs. “Fine, but I’m just putting it on the record that I don’t think this is smart.”

Joe doesn’t answer audibly, and the soft footsteps move closer until they’re right outside of Patrick’s bunk. 

“Okay, we gotta move quickly,” Joe says, “because if the curtain opening doesn’t wake him up, this definitely will.”

_ What the hell is he talking about?  _ Patrick sits up a little more, growing increasingly more afraid that this involves Pete’s hair somehow. 

“Okay, so you’re gonna pull the curtain back and sit him up, and I’m gonna -“ Joe doesn’t finish his sentence, but there’s a rustling that indicates him making some sort of gesture. 

“Okay,” Andy says begrudgingly. 

“Alright, I’m just going to test this real quick,” Joe says, and there’s the unmistakable sound of a lighter clicking on.

“What the  _ hell?”  _ Patrick exclaims, yanking his curtain back and finally deciding that he really needs to intervene here. “Are you trying to set his fucking hair on fire?”

To his credit, Joe has the decency to look guilty. “Uh, well, technically -“

“I  _ tried  _ to tell him we shouldn’t,”Andy adds. 

Pete wakes up then, drawing his curtain aside just enough to poke his head out. “What’s going on?” he asks. 

“Joe and Andy are trying to set your hair on fire,” Patrick says. 

Andy winces. “Okay, look, this was  _ Joe’s  _ idea -“

“What the fuck?” Pete interrupts. “Joe, what the actual fuck?”

“It’s, uh, I, your hair,” Joe says, waving his hands around. 

“Jesus Christ, it’s not even that long,” Pete groans. 

“It’s halfway down your back, Pete,” says Patrick. “But. I digress. It’s three fucking am, can we all just go to sleep and deal with this in the morning?”

Joe shoots Patrick a look like,  _ Why do you keep avoiding this? You know that something weird’s going on with Pete’s hair,  _ but Patrick resolutely ignores him. 

“I’m going to bed,” Patrick announces. “Goodnight.” 

He yanks his curtain shut and drops his head back against his pillow. There’s some unintelligible grumbling, a slamming door, and then the bus is dropped back into silence. 

Patrick finally drifts off to sleep, wondering why the fuck he ever thought this curse would be a good idea.

* * *

 

It’s a whole three days before any hair drama resurfaces. Patrick wakes up slightly disoriented before he remembers that oh yeah, he’s in a hotel. The next thing he remembers is that  _ oh yeah, he was supposed to be on the bus ten minutes ago.  _

He jumps out of bed, not even registering that hey, Joe was in the room last night but now isn’t as he throws all of his stuff into his bag and barely manages to put on actual clothes before running down to the hotel lobby and back to his and Pete’s bus. 

When he gets there, it’s…empty. “Pete?” he calls. 

There’s no answer, and Patrick’s just starting to worry when he hears a shriek - a very Pete-sounding shriek, to be specific - coming from Andy and Joe’s bus.

Patrick’s on the bus in a second, and when he pushes the door open, he, even though he won’t admit it later, shrieks as well.

Andy’s standing by the sink, splashing water everywhere as he motions to Joe and Pete. Joe is flapping his hands frantically at Pete’s hair. Pete is…screaming, and understandably so, because his hair is on fucking fire. 

“What the  _ fuck?!”  _ Patrick yells. “Are you all fucking insane?”

They don’t even pay him any mind as Pete finally runs over and sticks his head in the sink. He comes up a second later, his hair simultaneously dripping and smoking. His  _ fully-intact _ hair. 

“What the actual fuck?” Joe almost shouts. “There’s no way - it’s not even  _ singed!” _

“My head’s pretty damn singed,” Pete mutters. He leans down and puts his head under the cool water again as Andy just puts his face in his hands. 

“Um, what the fuck?” Patrick repeats. 

“We were trying to get rid of his hair,” Joe says, “but like, there’s something seriously weird going on here. Fire-proof hair doesn’t fucking exist.”

Patrick looks to Andy for help, but Andy refuses to meet his gaze. “Look,” Patrick says finally, “fire-proof hair or not, you can’t just set people’s hair on fire, I swear to God. We’re already like twenty minutes late, so I’m going back to my bus.  _ Please _ don’t set anyone else on fire.” 

He doesn’t wait for a response before stalking back to his bus. He loves his band, sure, and this is his fault anyway, but  _ Jesus Christ. _

* * *

 

“Okay, so I have a theory,” Joe says dramatically, steepling his fingers. “Pete is cursed.”

Patrick carefully keeps his face neutral, because damn, Joe actually hit the nail on the head with that one. “Cursed,” he repeats, hoping his ‘skeptical’ tone sounds convincing.

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but hear me out,” Joe insists. “His hair’s been growing way faster than hair fucking, like,  _ can,  _ and it’s literally indestructible. Conclusion? He’s cursed.”

“What are we supposed to do if he is, though?” Andy asks.

“Well, get him un-cursed, I guess,” Joe says. 

Patrick sighs. “You really thought this through, didn’t you, Joe.”

“Shut up, okay, you’re the one that keeps telling Pete to cut his hair. And now that he physically  _ can’t  _ cut his hair, you’re the one acting like it’s not a problem!”

Patrick just folds his arms and sits back in his chair, because, yes, Joe’s right, but he’s afraid that something’s going to slip out if he doesn’t. 

“Maybe it’s a true love thing?” Andy says. “I mean, I’m still not sold on the whole ‘cursed’ thing, but what if that’s how it’s broken?”

Joe makes a contemplative face. “True love’s kiss?” 

“Maybe true love’s haircut,” Patrick suggests. They’re close enough, he might as well push them in the right direction since hey, Pete’s hair  _ really  _ does need to get cut soon. 

“That sounds fucking ridiculous,” Joe says, “but somehow it sounds right?”

Andy sighs. “Are you two seriously going with this bullshit? There’s gotta be some other explanation here, c’mon, Patrick, back me up.”

“I don’t know, like, I know it sounds crazy, but unless you’ve got anything better….” Patrick trails off with a helpless shrug.  _ Why the hell did I ever think any of this was a good idea? _

Andy sighs again, sounding more resigned this time. “Okay, say he is cursed. What are we supposed to do, get literally everyone in the world to try and cut his hair until we find his true love?”

Joe has to take a minute to think about this one. “I mean… we could just start with people he’s close to?”

“That could work,” Patrick muses. “We know it’s not you, at least.” He doesn’t add that he’s not on the list of people Pete’s true love can’t be, hoping that Joe will somehow forget that Patrick hasn’t actually tried to cut Pete’s hair.

“And thank god for that,” Joe mutters.

* * *

 

By the end of the next week, Pete’s hair is three-quarters of the way down his back, and nearly everyone he knows has tried to cut it. And failed. 

Patrick, Joe, and Andy, at Patrick’s insistence, still haven’t told him about the “true love” part of their theory. They explained the cursed part, with plenty of skepticism from Andy, and Pete seemed open to the idea, but Patrick would  _ not  _ let them explain the true love part.

“That’s the part we’re most unsure about anyway,” he explained. “And we don’t want him to freak out if someone can cut his hair that he’s never, like, thought about like that or something.” (Read:  _ I don’t want him to freak out if it’s me. _ )

However, the possibility that it  _ is  _ Patrick only seems to grow with every confused friend being herded off the bus by Joe.

“Who  _ haven’t  _ we tried?” Pete asks later that night. He’s twisting a strand of his hair around his finger and trying to act like he’s not mildly worried, even though the entire band can see through his bullshit. 

Patrick shifts, letting his half-finished sudoku puzzle fall onto the couch cushion next to him. No one’s mentioned that he hasn’t tried to cut Pete’s hair yet, he figures that everyone just assumed that he had by now - and he plans on keeping things that way if at all possible. 

“Uh… fuck, I don’t know. Pretty much everyone on the label’s tried, um, we could maybe ask… I don’t fucking know,” Joe admits. He stares out of the window for a moment at the countryside rushing by, like maybe Pete’s true love will magically appear from the cornfields. “Can you think of anyone else?”

Pete sighs. “I don’t know, I mean, does it have to be someone specific to break the curse? Like, maybe it has to be the person who cursed me or something.”

Patrick shoots Joe a look that says  _ We’re  _ not  _ telling him, remember?  _ “Maybe,” he says, and he’s hoping that Pete is - no, that Pete  _ isn’t  _ \- right. “But who would’ve cursed you?”

“Crazy fan?” Pete suggests. 

Joe  _ thunks  _ his forehead against the window. “We’re screwed in that case,” he mutters. He tosses Patrick a,  _ Remind me why we’re not telling him again? This is stupid,  _ look that Patrick does his best to ignore.

_ He’ll freak out,  _ Patrick finally replies, once Pete turns slightly. Joe makes a resigned face and goes back to staring out of the window.

  
Pete lifts a chunk of hair and tosses it up so it falls over his shoulder as he sighs. Patrick picks his sudoku puzzle back up and tries to not keep imagining what it would be like if he could actually cut Pete’s hair.

* * *

 

“I posted a picture from the show last night on Instagram, and over half of the comments were about my fucking hair. I'm getting tired of this shit,” Pete complains the next day. He and Patrick are in their dressing room, getting ready for the show. Andy and Joe are off…. doing something, Patrick doesn’t know or care, really, as long as they’re back in twenty minutes. 

“Maybe you could put it up in a ponytail or something so it’s less, like, less  _ there? _ ” Patrick suggests. He steps over to stand behind Pete so they’re both looking at Pete’s reflection in the dingy mirror. 

Pete’s face twists, considering, and he grabs his hair in a fist and holds it behind his head. “I guess,” he says dubiously. 

“Here, hand me that rubber band,” Patrick says, gesturing to the table in front of the mirror. Pete hands him the rubber band, and Patrick pulls Pete’s hair back and loops the band around it a couple of times. “There,” he says once it’s done. It doesn’t look  _ great,  _ it’s a little too tight, but then Pete reaches up and loosens it a tiny bit and it’s… not terrible. 

“Thanks,” Pete says softly. He doesn’t meet Patrick’s eyes in the mirror, though, and he seems almost removed from the situation. 

“What’s wrong?” Patrick asks, because at this point, he’s pretty damn good at knowing when Pete’s upset.

Pete sighs. “I just…” he turns around in his chair so he’s facing Patrick before continuing, “I’m just really worried, I guess, because what if there’s like, one person that can cut my hair, but they live in fucking Russia or some shit, or what if I’m not even cursed and it’s something else entirely, and it’s not like this is a huge deal, but it’s starting to really piss me off, and then I don’t want to be like fucking Rapunzel, and -”   


“Hey,” Patrick interrupts. (He’s proud of himself for not pumping a fist in victory, because Pete  _ basically  _ just admitted that he needs to cut his hair. Mission accomplished. Sort of.) “Hey, it’s gonna be okay. I’m sure we’ll find whoever it is, and if it’s not a curse at all, we’ll figure it out.”

He puts a hand on Pete’s shoulder because hey, Pete’s physical with him all the time, and it feels like the right thing to do anyway. Pete smiles a tiny bit, finally meeting Patrick’s eyes.

There’s something in Pete’s face in that moment that makes Patrick almost want to confess, well,  _ everything.  _ Or at least offer to try and cut Pete’s hair, at the very least. 

Just then, however, the door swings open, and Andy and Joe come into the dressing room laughing about something on Andy’s phone. Patrick automatically takes his hand off of Pete’s shoulder and lets himself get swept up in Joe’s comments on Pete’s hair until they’re called to the stage. 

It’s a good show, not terrible or anything, but not great. Pete’s clearly hyper-aware of the way his ponytail swings over his shoulders when he headbangs, but Patrick likes to think that the reassuring looks he keeps casting in Pete’s direction help just a bit.

* * *

A week later, Pete wakes up to find that his hair reaches all the way down his back. Patrick is the next to find this out, because Pete’s first course of action is, of course, to yank open Patrick’s bunk curtain and start yelling about it.

“Patrick,  _ please  _ help, Jesus Christ, it’s down to my fucking ass and I literally don’t know what to fucking do, this is fucking ridiculous, and - “

Patrick holds up one hand, using the other to rub his eyes groggily. “Slow, slow down, just - what are you freaking out about?”   


“My fucking  _ hair!”  _ Pete nearly shouts. “It’s down to my ass! What the fuck!”

“Okay, just… take a deep breath?” Patrick offers. “Uh… it’ll be okay. We can keep asking around, I’m sure there’s someone who hasn’t tried yet.”

He regrets those words as soon as they leave his mouth, because Pete’s face is smoothing out and his eyes are lighting up a second later. “Wait,” he says, “wait, you haven’t tried yet! C’mon, Trick, we’re fucking soulmates or some shit, I bet you can do it.”

_ Shit.  _ “No, I’ve tried,” Patrick says, blindly bullshitting because he can’t do this, he’d rather stay unaware forever than have an answer either way. “Remember?”

“No, you haven’t, the fuck, just -” Pete pauses for a moment, thinking, before dashing off towards the kitchenette. He returns a second later with a pair of scissors and holds them out to Patrick. “Here!”

Patrick takes the scissors like he’s signing a warrant for his own execution. “Turn around,” he tells Pete with a sigh as he sits up in his bunk. He can’t risk Pete seeing his face no matter how this turns out.

Pete does, and then Patrick slowly lifts the scissors, taking the very tip of a few strands of Pete’s hair in between the blades. He closes his eyes before he closes the blades, and then there’s a barely audible  _ snip.  _

Patrick’s heart doesn’t stop so much as fucking combust in chest. Fuck. He just cut Pete’s hair. Pete is… he’s…. 

“Holy fuck, did you just cut my hair?” Pete asks, voice trembling. He turns around to face Patrick, who can’t even imagine  _ what  _ his face must look like right now. “You just cut my hair! Oh my God, Trick, thank fuck, fuck, god, I  _ told  _ you you could do it, holy shit.”    
  
“Y-yeah,” Patrick stammers. “Wow.” 

Luckily, Pete is too excited to notice that Patrick’s having a goddamn heart attack. “Quick, cut the rest, please, fuck, I can’t wait to get this shit off of my head, I don’t even care how you cut it, just do it -”

“Yeah, just, just turn around,” Patrick says. Pete listens, although he’s practically  _ vibrating,  _ and Patrick takes a deep breath before cutting another chunk of Pete’s hair.

He’s obviously never cut hair before, so trying to figure out a way to get rid of as much as hair as possible while still making Pete look decent is an alright distraction from the fact that…. that Patrick’s Pete’s true love. And the other way around. Fuck. 

_ Well,  _ Patrick’s brain offers,  _ at least Pete doesn’t know, right?  _

And that’s a good point and all, because it means that Patrick could hypothetically go on for the rest of his life without ever telling Pete and it would be  _ fine.  _ Perfectly fine. 

Except… somehow, Patrick kind of wants to tell Pete. Yes, he’s aware that that’s a terrible idea, but if they’re really each other’s “true love,” how badly could it go?

_ Very badly,  _ his brain reminds him.  _ Let’s not risk the band imploding, ok- _

“Okay, done,” Patrick says all in one breath, dropping the scissors onto the bed. There’s hair all over the floor, but he really couldn’t give less of a shit about that right now.    


Pete turns around and throws his arms around Patrick, planting a kiss on his cheek that definitely doesn’t make Patrick’s heart stutter. “Fuck, Trick, thank you, you’re literally a life saver,” Pete exclaims. “Holy shit, we gotta go find Andy and Joe, they’re probably still on their bus, c’mon!” 

“You go, I’ll stay here and clean up,” says Patrick.  _ Shit.  _ Andy and Joe are going to  _ know  _ the minute Pete shows up on their bus. 

Pete barely nods before he’s dashing out of the bus door and across the parking lot. Patrick is very impressed that he’s able to wait a whole thirty seconds before screaming into his pillow. Fuck. He’s going to clean up all the goddamn hair, and then he’s going to go for a walk that’ll most likely end with him  _ never coming even close to any of his bandmates ever again. _

* * *

 

The problem, Patrick realizes, with trying to avoid your bandmates is that it’s  _ impossible  _ when you’re on tour. To be fair, he makes it an entire two hours before Joe calls him for the fifth time, and there’s kind of an unspoken rule about how if you don’t pick up the fifth time someone calls you, you’re probably fucking dead or something, so he picks up. 

“Hello?” he says, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

“You cut Pete’s hair!” Joe practically shrieks. “So, like, wait, does this mean that you’re his tr-”

“Shut  _ up! _ ” Patrick hisses, because if he knows  _ anything,  _ it’s that 1) Pete’s sitting right next to Joe and listening in, and 2) Pete’s going to flip his shit if he finds out. The old ladies sitting at the table across from him in the tiny cafe shoot him dirty looks, but Patrick can’t find it in himself to care right now.

Joe huffs. “Why-”

“We don’t know if that’s even, like, even  _ it _ , okay, it could’ve just been a fluke, and I mean, I was just, just tossing out ideas that day, it’s not like tru- that sort of thing even happens in real life, and I’m not even - I don’t - “ Patrick flails an arm uselessly as he speaks.

“Oh, you totally have a thi-“

“Shut  _ up! _ ” Patrick says again, but he doesn’t make any attempt to deny it because Joe’s right, even if Patrick can barely admit to himself. He’s totally head over heels for Pete Wentz, and if this curse is right, Pete’s in love with him too. 

Joe’s eye roll is almost audible. “Look, you can work out your repressed shit or figure out why else only you’d be able to cut his hair later, but right now we kind of have an interview to get ready for in twenty minutes.”

“ _ Shit,”  _ Patrick says, “okay, uh, I’ll just - I’ll just meet you guys at the radio station, just text me the address. Bye.” He jabs the END CALL button and just barely manages to hold himself back from dropping his face onto the table next to his phone.

“So I’ve noticed you cut your hair, Pete, that’s a pretty big shift from earlier this week,” the interviewer says. Patrick tenses up immediately. (He does have to give her some credit, though, most interviewers they meet don’t even know their names, let alone what their hair usually looks like.) “Why the sudden change?”   


“It needed to go,” Pete says with a short, forced laugh. “Patrick was the one who finally cut it, actually, we, uh, we couldn’t get an actual hairdresser to come meet us out on tour right now.”

Patrick can hear Joe and Andy snickering quietly behind him and has to bite back a hissed, “Fuck off!” Instead, he leans towards the microphone Pete’s holding towards him. “Yeah, Pete really did need to cut it, and while I’ve never cut hair before, I was...  um, I was the only one who would.”

The interviewer is giving them a look, kinda like she knows something is up, that they’re lying, but she can’t figure out what the truth might be. Finally, she says, “Well, it looks great! Anyway, we’ve heard rumors about an upcoming music video…”

The rest of the interview passes uneventfully, and Patrick’s on stage getting ready to play their last song of the set before he knows it. 

Pete’s saying something into his microphone about how their music video might be dropping soon, and then Patrick counts off and heads right into Saturday. It’s good at first, nothing out of the ordinary at all, but then Pete comes over and puts his face in the crook of Patrick’s neck like he hasn’t in years.    


“Hey,” he says softly. 

Patrick  _ definitely  _ doesn’t miss a note when his brain reminds him that Pete’s his fucking  _ soulmate,  _ that everything Patrick hasn’t let himself want for years might actually be attainable, that Pete… fuck. Patrick shoves Pete away gently with his shoulder because he’s trying to  _ sing,  _ okay, he can’t deal with this shit right now. 

Pete lets himself get pushed, surprisingly, and then he’s handing his bass off to a tech and getting ready to climb into the crowd. Patrick watches him out of the corner of his eye. He’s been unable to stop staring at the (admittedly uneven, oops) lines of Pete’s short hair all day. Pete… has short hair. Because of Patrick. Because they’re fucking  _ soulmates.  _

And that’s another missed note right there, because whoa.  _ Fucking.  _ That’s way too much for Patrick right now, so he just closes his eyes and gives everything he has to the rest of the song.

* * *

 

Patrick comes back onto the bus the next night after a one am Walmart run to find Pete sitting on the couch staring directly at the door. 

“Uh, hi?” Patrick says, dropping his bags onto the floor as the bus door swings shut behind him. 

Pete just  _ looks  _ at him for a long moment before reaching behind himself and grabbing…  _ Oh, shit,  _ Patrick thinks. 

“So,” Pete says conversationally, “I was trying to be nice and wash your sheets for you because I know you don’t do that shit often enough on your own. And I found this book?”

Patrick steps forward and tries to snatch his spellbook out of Pete’s hands, but Pete slips it behind his back and out of Patrick’s reach. “Pete, c’mon, that’s just - that was my grandmother’s, that’s all, it’s not - “

“The Rapunzel Curse,” Pete interrupts. His tone and face are scarily neutral, and Patrick’s kind of starting to really freak out, because fuck, what if Pete’s, like,  _ seriously  _ mad at him. “This curse causes the victim’s hair to grow uncontrollably until it’s cut by the victim’s true love. The first cut by true love ends the curse.”

“I - “ Patrick says, and he’s making another grab for the book because that’s the one thing he has a chance of controlling in this situation, but then Pete’s…. kissing him?   


Holy fucking shit,  _ Pete’s kissing him.  _ He has a hand around Patrick’s wrist to stop him from getting the spellbook and the other is threading through the back of Patrick’s hair and pulling him closer. Patrick’s kissing back almost on pure instinct; his brain has pretty much shorted out by this point. Holy shit. 

Patrick finally manages to tear himself away god knows how long later, leaning back just enough to stammer out, “This isn’t - like, this isn’t just because of that, right? And fuck, I’m so sorry about that, Pete, that was really, I just, your hair? And I didn’t see the whole, whole true love thing until it was cast and - fuck, you don’t hate me for being kind of a witch, right? It’s not, like - I don’t - I don’t do magic a  _ lot,  _ only really when I need to and - “

“Patrick,” Pete cuts in, laughing just enough to crinkle his eyes around the edges. “I don’t hate you for being kind of a witch, I honestly  _ deserved  _ for you to curse me, and uh. This definitely isn’t, like, a new thing.” He leans up slightly and brushes a kiss over the edge of Patrick’s lips. “So,” he continues, without sitting back at all, “I had, like, a whole speech thing that I planned while I was waiting for you to get back, but it’s kind of long, so just… wanna date?”

Patrick can’t think of any way to respond to that other than kissing Pete again, one of his hands coming up to run through Pete’s short - amazingly, blessedly  _ short  _ \- hair. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments + kudos are rly appreciated!


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